Lancelotti approached and surveyed me with an insolent leer: he held a rope—the reins of the lawyer's mules; in a moment it was looped round the notary's neck, and the other end thrown over the arm of a beech-tree. The monk, kneeling on the sod, prayed with fervour: increased probably by anxiety for himself. The struggles of the poor wretch were horrible to behold: overcome with the terror of death, he fought like a wild beast; scratching, biting, and howling: but in the strong grasp of his powerful destroyers his efforts were like those of an infant. In a minute he swung from the branch of the beech, while, with a stern smile of grim satisfaction, the robber watched the plunges of his victim writhing in the death agony: the sharp withered features growing ghastly, as the pale light of the dawning day fell on their distorted lines. But enough.
"Signor Canonico," said Varro, "you may go; the mountains are before you—we meddle not with monks." The priest retired instantly, without bestowing a thought on his companions in trouble. "And who are you, signor, with the mandolin?" continued Baptistello.
"An improvisatore, from Sicily last, excellency," replied the lad, doffing his hat with all humility; "I have come to rouse my countrymen, by the song and guitar, to battle against the legions of Massena, as they did of old against the Saracen and Goth. I am but a poor lad, and have no ransom to offer save a song of the glorious Marco Sciarra; not a paola can I give your excellencies: my sole inheritance is this guitar, which my father gave me with his dying hand (for he, too, was an improvisatore), when he fell in battle under the banner of Cardinal Ruffo."
"Where, boy?"
"On the plains of Apulia—I was a little child then," said the lad, shedding tears. "See, the mandolin is stained with his blood."
"Benissimo!" exclaimed the band, who crowded round us.
"Thou, too, art free; for we war not with the poor. Away! follow the monk, and the virgin speed thee." But the minstrel bestowed an anxious glance on me, and drew near; scorning to imitate the selfish priest, who had now disappeared from the path which wound over the brightening mountains.
"Your name, signor?" asked Varro, surveying me with a glance of surprise, and seeming puzzled what to think of me.
"Dundas, captain in the British service, and commandant of Scylla," I replied, with haughty brevity.
"The friend of Castelermo, and who so bravely avenged his death on the renegade Navarro—is it not so?"